This week in Classical European Cuisine, we covered an Italian menu. For some reason, I always end up with first dibs on which recipe I wanted to choose so I picked the bread soup and the gnocchi.
I figured gnocchi would be pretty easy since I'd made it a couple times before without any huge problems and that it would taste good and look good and during critique everyone will tell me how wonderful I am for making such a wonderful dish and my personality's so great, I should have my own cooking show.
Admit it--if you were in culinary school too, the ability to affect star quality would be a deciding factor on what recipes you choose to do in class also.
Unfortunately, gnocchi was a bad choice. As soon as we finished discussion and started gathering our ingredients, the guy from the other group that was doing the same dish wanted to roast his potatoes with mine. I can see how one would interpret this as a nicety and that the dude just didn't want to go through the effort of cleaning another dish or preheating another oven and it would be most likely be more beneficial to have two sets of eyes watching over one tray of potatoes rather two sets of eyes watching over two trays of potatoes but judging from how the night went, I'd sleep better telling myself he was just out to one up me and that it was his fault I had so much trouble making the dish.
The dough was too soft (possibly from being overcooked) so it was hard to work with and I cooked a small batch to see if the gnocchi got to be a better hardness when cooked but the result was still too soft so in the frustration of getting flour all over the place and taking way too long to do a simple recipe, I just said screw it, boiled the whole batch, drained it, and sauteed some up in browned butter.
I am strangely exceptional at soups and sauces, so my sauce turned out pretty good. The other guy had the same problem with his pasta being too soft but my gnocchi totally kicked the other team's gnocchi's ass.
My other dish was bread, egg, and cheese soup. Basically, you just make garlic toast, pop it in a bowl, crack a raw egg on top of it, then drown it all in boiling chicken stock. I was in such a rush from trying to plate up on time, I forgot to season the chicken stock. It was incredibly bland and the egg didn't cook all the way because it kept slipping off the toast...
Although, the rest of my group did wonderfully.
Osso Bucco (veal shank), saffron risotto, and sauteed chicory. Ho-ly cannoli. I swear, if I only had a day to live, this dish would be my make-a-wish. The meat was insanely tender and the sauce went so well with it. Unfortunately, three of us in the group wanted the marrow and I somehow ended up losing that fight.
Saffron risotto. Perfect amount of saffron. Nicely al dente.
Chilled veal in tuna sauce. I thought I would hate this because of the "chilled red meat," "gherkins," and the "fishy tuna sauce" parts, but it was actually pretty good. It's horrendous how much I enjoy veal.
Vanilla bean panna cotta. It didn't set enough (I don't think it was a time factor--the recipe just seems to have the wrong gelatin : liquid ratio) but it tasted like vanilla bean ice cream!
Fun week, overall. Just a whole lot to do and wasted a lot of time struggling with that gnocchi recipe.
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